Design Wide Open contracted eSolutions Web Services to do the website development for the new WSI Industries website design. Along with this, we needed to integrate the website into a customized Content Management System. WSI has some specific requirements that needed to be met. After some requirements gathering we solidified the list of requirements:

flash development – each market will have an animated intro (fade up bkgd, slide in blue bar, fade up featured element)

individual market content will be admin controlled, but number of areas highlighted is hardcoded

individual markets are accessible via sidenav or via the subnav within the markets page layout

File Library & Auto Email System

the admin tool will include an uploaded file library – not visible on website front-end

links to uploaded files may also be placed on any page within the site for immediate download

Form Pages: Contact/Request Quote/File Upload

4 separate pages, each with 3-5 input fields – all except contact will include a file upload option

form content will be sent to email address specified in admin tool

file uploads will also be stored in admin for later retrieval

all page and submission completed alert content will be admin controlled. contact page will include a vcard download and links to Google Maps

After addressing the needs, we initially made the decision to develop a custom PHP based CMS that we’ve used on other clients’ websites in the past. However, after more research and analysis, we found that WordPress 3.0 would satisfy every requirement above. Not only that, but we were easily able to add some additional features that the client had requested without incurring high change request fees. We were able to do this since there were readily available modules that satisfied the clients’ requirements.

After completing this project, we found that WordPress is much more powerful than we initially thought. With the ability to manage navigation, manage forms via an admin interface, and much more, we will definitely be using WordPress as our primary CMS and throwing away our custom-built CMS. In fact, after the successful launch of this project, we have decided to integrate our own website to WordPress 3.0!